ABSTRACT
Cosmopolitanism is the product of an idea of the world and an ideal form of global citizenship. Everyone who is committed to it recalls the phrase first used by Socrates and then adopted as a motif by the Cynics and the Stoics: ‘I am a citizen of the world’. Indeed the etymology of the word and its theory appear to be in wondrous symmetry. Throughout history cosmopolitanism has continuously surfaced as a concept that addresses the meaning of the subject at both the core of being and the widest spheres of belonging. It can be traced back to the mythological fascination with the abyss of the void and the infinite cosmos, as well as recurring in the philosophical debates about the relationship between individual freedom and universal rights. I will argue that the need to give form – to make a world – out of these extremities is a persistent feature of critical imagination and that its contemporary manifestations are more clearly grasped through the concept of aesthetic cosmopolitanism. This general claim about aesthetic cosmopolitanism is grounded in the observation of the current tendencies to generate a dialogue between global issues and local experiences in contemporary art, and is subsequently developed through a reframing of the debates over the function of the imagination within aesthetics and politics.
